I left Japan, as I have said, just before the cherry-blossom festivities began, but I was able to see a number of the dances—which never change but are passed with exactitude, step for step, gesture for gesture and expression for expression, from one geisha to another—as performed by a child who was being educated for the profession. Although so young she knew accurately upwards of sixty dances, and the pick of these she executed for a few spectators, in a little fragile paper-walled house outside Yokohama, while her adoring aunt played the wistful repetitive accompaniments.

The little creature—a mere watch-chain ornament—had a typical Japanese face, half mask, half mischief, and a tiny high voice which now and then broke into the dance. But dances, strictly speaking, they are not. They are really posturing and the manoeuvres of a fan. To me they are strangely fascinating, and, with the music, almost more so than our Western ballets. But there is a difference between the ballet and the geisha dances, and it is so wide that there is no true comparison; for whereas the ballet stimulates and excites, these Japanese movements hypnotise and lull.